Another big marine facility for Newport?

This rendering shows the $25 million Marine Mammal and Marine Genomics Building planned for Newport. The Oregon State University project got $9 million from the state. (Rendering courtesy of Oregon State University)

One huge project already is raising Newport’s status as a world leader in oceanic research while promising long-term jobs for the state’s depressed construction industry. Another project may soon follow.

Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal and Marine Genomics Building got a boost from the Oregon Legislature, which dedicated $9 million in state money to the $25 million project. Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed House Bill 3643 into law last week.

The state money allows the project to compete for $16 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Construction is under way on another project, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Operations Center-Pacific. That $38.3 million center will host NOAA’s Pacific fleet.

The two projects, neighbors on Yaquina Bay, help establish the area as a top-tier research hub, said Jock Mills, director of government relations for OSU. “Newport is fast becoming the Woods Hole (Mass.) of the West,” he said.

The state’s $9 million commitment to the new building depends on getting the federal $16 million, Mills said. The Legislature shifted the money from other OSU construction projects, and it would return to those projects if the federal money falls through.

Of the state’s $9 million, $4 million came from bonding authority for a biofuels building that was approved in the 2009 session but failed to receive matching money. The demonstration project would have, and someday still might, supplement the university’s natural gas cogeneration plant.

Another $4 million was shifted from Strand Agriculture Hall’s deferred maintenance program. The final $1 was left over in bonding authority for the Hallie Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families.

The federal proposal is due April 26, and OSU officials will know whether they’ll get the $16 million by September. The building would be completed three years from then.

With a new building, said Bruce Mate, director of OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute, the institute could expand from its current 28 combined faculty, staff and students to 80 or even 100. The move would set off a ripple effect, he said, as OSU researchers leave federal buildings they share space in, and other programs expand there, creating more jobs.

According to an economist’s analysis, Mate said, construction of the new building alone would inject 160 percent of the money spent on the project into the local economy.

“What’s more important is the science that will result in having the people and space,” he said. “But long-term, all those people will be generating revenue that flows into Oregon rather than being a drain on the state.”

A new building will let scientists track ocean conditions that are in flux from factors including climate change and whaling, said Scott Baker, associate director of the institute. “We expect to see more change in the next few decades than there’s been in the last two millennia,” he said.

“Keeping up with that requires the best tools we have.”

The new, 41,000 square-foot building will allow for expanded gene research, Baker said. That’s also a fast-changing field.

It took billions of dollars to sequence the human genome. The second generation of sequencing allowed the humpback whale genome to be sequenced for less than $10,000.

“We’re looking at the third generation of sequencing that requires server rooms and that kind of thing,” Baker said. “It would facilitate genomic research where you’re moving away from looking at one or two genes in populations of animals to looking at hundreds of thousands of genes.”

For Mate, the human interactions are just as important as the scientific equipment. “Among our four program areas in (the institute), we’re located in four different buildings,” he said.

“Things happen over coffee breaks or around the water cooler on campus that we can’t have here,” Mate said. “We don’t even have that among our own group of folks.

“Even inclement weather is a factor,” he said. “When the rain’s coming in sideways, it makes you think twice about going from one building to another. You e-mail people in the same facility (instead of meeting face to face) because of the weather.”

The new building will provide space for researchers from other university disciplines to work in Newport. Ongoing research projects would benefit from the input of mechanical and electrical engineers and veterinarians, for example, Mate said.

“We’re looking forward to an environment where people say why the whale I tagged is going to a specific place,” he said. “We can talk about what the animals eat, (and) someone in veterinary medicine can talk about ocean health.”